Public Therapy Buses, Information Specialty Bums, Solar Cook-A-Mats and Other Visions of the 21st Century: Second Edition, Unabridged

This is the 2nd unabridged edition of a small comics-format book first published in 1991. The book offered Steven M. Johnson's illustrations of his preposterous, plausible and prophetic inventions and scenes of the future. For this new edition, the author-illustrator dug into old files and boxes of proposed layouts and located nearly 100 concept sketches–redrawing them when they needed more definition–that had never appeared in the first book. It is 82 pages longer than the original book, and gives a unique and imaginative view of possible future scenes based on technologies and cultural trends in 1990. Many familiar features of the world today, such as small cellphones and the Web, did not exist then. Some readers will discover that the book's vivid, strange or humorous images still seem fresh, and that today's America looks a lot like what Mr. Johnson imagined 22 years earlier.